34 Chapter 33
His feet and shoulders were sore and his side was starting to hurt from exhaustion but Crunch had no intention of spending another night in the tunnels so he forged on, leaning heavily on his makeshift walking stick.
He finally got to the last curve before the mouth of the tunnel and leaned heavily against the wall, breathing heavily.
If his calculations were accurate, there should be guards patrolling past the tunnel but there was a pattern to these movements.
He carefully peeked again, there was a small crevice where he could hide to properly calculate his next movements but he would have to hurry or he would get caught before he could even make good his escape.
The guards were marching alternatively but there's was a space of time where they would both be gone from the mouth of the cave.
They were dressed in traditional guard uniform made up of loose pants tucked in leather boots, a thick cotton robe to protect from the chafing that the heavy metal armor no doubt gave them.
A dark green sash across the chest from left should to right side to show their station as Border guards, they were both Lower Class Elves which was no surprise, their large bodies made bigger by the armor and large weapons they carried.
Crunch waited for their huge forms to go out of sight before hurrying to the crevice, moving as fast as he could without jostling the things in his rucksack.
The crevice was barely enough to keep him hidden and he heaved a sigh of relief that he was on the smaller side, he could easily pass off as a tall Middle Class Elf but his skin was too dark to have any hope of that.
He carefully watched them pass again, calculating the time interval it took to complete one patrol - it wasn't much.
His side was stinging from the short dash he had made to the crevice and he knew that he would be pushing himself to get past the guards, and get lost in the crowd of the city but it was his only option, it wasn't like he had the luxury of choice.
Luckily it was an abandoned tunnel so other than the silk ribbons holding the Imperial seal, there was nothing to block off the exit if the tunnel had been closed off with something sturdier he would have been in a bit of a pinch.
That also meant that the Border Stations were afar off and the guards patrolling would be few and distracted.
He waited till they came back to get a roughly accurate estimate of how long he would have to make the run for it, if he didn't have an ace up his sleeve he would have been better off waiting for his wounded side to kill him because he would have to go around the high walls of the town and he knew that before he could get to safety he would already have a couple arrows and spears in his back.
He would have to leave the spear here, it would only slow him down and give him away so it wasn't difficult to make the decision.
The will to stay alive was burning through him, strengthening his already weak body and making him forget about the smarting pain in his side.
He was taking a gamble with his life but then again he was supposed to already be dead so it didn't really matter.
There was a secret entrance in the wall, he would slip through and make his into the town.
The Border guards had cases of stragglers sneaking in through abandoned tunnels so hopefully they would halt the chase when he disappeared into the crowds.
It was now or never, he took in his breath and held it there, the guards were leaving his line of sight again.
He slid out of the crevice and made a mad dash for it, ignoring the warning calls of the guards who had been too stunned to give the chase immediately.
Crunch was unsurprised to hear the pattering of feet behind him but he had always been nimble on his feet even with the smarting injury in his side, his palms brushed the rough walls as he ran beside it, eye out for the the little hole that he hoped to slip through.
No one batted an eyelid at a ragged Elf coming out of a hole in the wall, clutching a torn rucksack and breathing heavily.
This was Sand Village and it was filled with foreigners who never stayed long enough to build any semblance of a life, maybe that was because it was so close to the edge of the City and the tunnels but that also meant no one cared about what anyone else did.
It was much like it's name, lacking foundations and loose.
Crunch kept moving, the Border guards would be too big to fit in the hole in the wall, especially with the armory and weapons they held - that's why he had opted to leave the spear back in the cave - even though right now each step drove a hot spark up his side, the spear would have been a distinguishing feature.
He had barely caught his breath when he heard the distinct yells of Border guards.
"Halt!!!"
He froze - 'just his luck' he groaned to himself, he had really thought that he had been able to lose them but they weren't taking him so easily.
He had moved from the back alleys of Sand Village and was now in the living parts, another distinctive feature of the village was that it had squat sand houses with flat roofs that one could walk on.
He took off, weaving through the dim and slender pathways that weaved and coiled between the noisy houses, blowing up dust.
The Border guards kept up the chase and he made sure to always run in the direction of people even if that slowed him down, it meant that he wouldn't run a lesser risk of getting shot because the guards wouldn't shoot innocent civilians.
He looked behind him for a split second and the next moment he was bumping into someone, the next moments was a flurry of movements as the person he had bumped into yelled something to him about a safehouse.
Before he could correct whatever assumptions the other Elf had made, the pounding of the Border guards drew near and before he could process the situation, he was running across rooftops with the Middle Class Elf that he had bumped into beside him.
Well, things could only get worse, right?
True to his words, they jumped down into what looked like a normal dead ended alleyway but there was a secret hatch there which was quickly opened for them to jump in.
They froze when pounding feet stopped right above where they where, the pitch dark space claustrophobic.
After what seemed like an eternity, the Border guards finally moved away after grumbling and making grunting noises in disappointment.
Crunch's sigh of relief got stuck in his throat as someone struck a match and the next moment a cold blade was pressed to his neck.
"Who are you?"
